


THIS IS NOT MY DIVISION.

by coldhope



Series: discstuck drabbles [3]
Category: Discworld - Terry Pratchett, Homestuck
Genre: Comparative Reaping Implement Discussion, ampora sticks the landing, discstuck crossover ficlets, you gribbled reality
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-03-26
Updated: 2012-03-26
Packaged: 2017-11-02 13:12:24
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,704
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/369338
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/coldhope/pseuds/coldhope
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>“Not sickles, huh.” These aren’t half bad, these cocktail weenies. “Why a scythe?”</p>
<p>IT LOOKS BETTER IN THE WOODCUTS.</p>
            </blockquote>





	THIS IS NOT MY DIVISION.

**Author's Note:**

> Death is _always_ busy when they perform the Rite. It's a thing.

You could have done without this hoofbeastshit ritual thing the humans seem to think will help. Aradia and Sollux have already thrashed out all the details any of you even fucking know about whatever massive temporospatial aneurysm burst and spat your asses out on this excuse for a planet, but this bunch of humans in dresses seem to think that summoning Death is a _good_ and _helpful_ thing to do under these circumstances. 

You wonder, not for the first fucking time, why this shit keeps happening to _you_.

Ampora is looking twitchy--well, twitchier than usual--and you have to wonder if he’s gonna burst out with some incredibly embarrassing wizards-aren’t-real speech at a crucial moment, so you do the first thing that comes to mind and elbow him in the ribs. “Ow!”

“Do me a favor, fishsticks,” you say. “If they _don’t_ end up summoning the Demoness and getting the lot of us culled like a bunch of braindead wrigglers, keep a glance nugget on what the one with the biggest beard is doing. You’re good with white science.”

He rubs at his side and you think you probably got him in the gills, serve him right for having those damn things right where people will want to be elbowing. “Whatever,” he says, but the distraction seems to have forestalled any mortifying outbursts. On your other side Sollux is muttering to Aradia under his breath, you can hear the rustle of his lisp. You’re not part of the ritual circle, you’re standing back in the corners of the room while the wizards or whatever they are chant and sway.

The one who reminds you of Sollux said something about being able to do this with a couple of bits of wood and four cc of squeakbeast blood, but these fuckers seem to have pulled out all the stops to show off for you. There’s flasks with green shit bubbling inside and dribbly candles and pretty much exactly the selection of paraphernalia you might expect from one of those fucking catalogs Ampora used to order. My First Wizard’s Lair.

Something’s happening, though, and all the little hairs down the back of your neck stand up just as you feel a tingle that’s like a combination of Sollux’s psionics and Gamzee’s freaky fucking chucklevoodoos, and then you feel like you’re about to puke because there’s a fucking _hole_ in the _floor_ where there wasn’t one a second ago and then something tall and gaunt and draped in a black cloak is standing there, wreathed in purple lightning and carrying a long curved staff with...a pointy thing stuck on the end.

Fuck.

Beside you Ampora swallows audibly.

WHAT IS IT THIS TIME? says a voice and it is not a voice that you think anyone in the room is capable of producing, it’s like...fuck, it’s like nothing you’ve actually ever heard, echoing and yet heavy and leaden. (Also you think it kind of happened inside your _head_ instead of being heard by your ears and jegus fuck this is _so fucked up_.)

You realize you have never _heard_ anyone talk in allcaps before. Typing, sure. Actually talking out loud in capslock is a little different.

“Ah, your honor,” says the wizard with the beard like a woolbeast stapled to his face. “Thank you so much for joinin’ us at such short notice, we appreciate your time. There has been an unforeseen and unprecedented--”

INCURSION. I KNOW.

“...incursion, yes. We were hoping perhaps that you might see your way clear to offering some advice on how to, ah, reverse it.”

THIS IS NOT MY DIVISION, says the voice, and the figure straightens up and pushes back its hood enough to show you and the rest of the room a face that is not a fucking face at all, it is a skull, with blue pinpoints of light glowing in the depths of the eye-sockets.

Fuck. Humans are _freaky_.

AND I HAPPENED TO BE AT A RATHER PLEASANT RECEPTION, RIDCULLY. GET ME A DRINK, IF YOU WOULD BE SO KIND, AND IF YOU HAVE ANY UNREASONABLY SMALL SAUSAGES IMPALED ON POLES I SHOULD ENJOY A SELECTION OF THOSE. YOUR NEW ACQUAINTANCES ARE FROM A COMPLETELY DIFFERENT UNIVERSE.

“That’s what I’ve been _saying_ ,” Aradia puts in. “It’s because of the game. There’s been a massive and random non-euclidean knot tied in spacetime and it’s brought universes together that were never actually meant to be in proximity.”

WHY DID YOU BOTHER TO SUMMON ME? YOU OBVIOUSLY HAVE EVERYTHING WELL IN HAND.

“They weren’t listening. Excuse me, sir, would you be Death?”

I AM HE ‘GAINST WHOM NO LOCK SHALL HOLD NOR FASTEN’D PORTAL BAR, agrees the voice, and you could swear there is a tiny little bit of smugness in those hollow syllables. 

The wizards are staring at Aradia, who ignores them. Someone has scuttled off and now returns with a drinks tray, warily extending it across the just-visible limit of the binding circle surrounding Death. The glasses fizzle a little as they pass through the barrier, and you can see skeletal fingers (how the fuck do they stay stuck together, you wonder) click around the stem of one. 

“I’m related to a personification of Death, the Handmaid,” says Aradia, and curtseys. “We’re mostly trying to work out how to get back home.”

SIMPLE, he says. GET THE TIMESTREAM REWOUND, CHECK THE PARAMETERS AT THE MOMENT OF THE TRANSIENT, AND REPLICATE THE THAUMIC SIGNATURE OF THE GRIBBLE-HOLE THAT BROUGHT YOU THROUGH TO THIS UNIVERSE. I DON’T KNOW WHY I HAVE TO TELL YOU THESE THINGS, RIDCULLY. IT’S EMBARRASSING.

The guy with the woolbeast on his chin is going red. You’ve realized everybody on this fucking flat-ass excuse for a planet has the same candy-red blood as you do, which is kind of a weird relief and kind of supremely fucked-up. “Er,” he says. “Gribble-hole, your honor?”

ARE YOU NOT FAMILIAR WITH THE GRIBBLE? IT IS A SMALL MARINE ISOPOD WHICH BORES ITS WAY THROUGH THE WOOD OF SUCH STRUCTURES AS SHIP’S HULLS AND JETTY PIERS. AS IT DOES SO IT LEAVES TUNNELS BEHIND, SIMILAR TO THE ONE THAT WAS CREATED DURING THESE INDIVIDUALS’ TRAVEL.

“Are you sayin’ we gribbled reality?” Ampora sounds more than a little unsteady, and you glance over at him. He’s...yeah, he doesn’t look so hot. He’s shocky-pale and his hands are trembling. Fuck. You hope to God he doesn’t fall over. 

PRECISELY. WHERE ARE THOSE SAUSAGES?

Welp. You have to give Ampora points for sticking the landing, crumpled in a pretty good heap with his head pillowed on his outflung arm. He has managed not to bonk his horns on the floor _or_ stab himself with them; you grudgingly come up with an eight out of ten. In the other corner Feferi squeaks and wriggles her way out from between Kanaya and Terezi and scuttles over to kneel beside him, and at this point you honestly wash your fucking hands of the entire goddamn bunch of them. Clearly this is beyond any control _you_ could muster.

As the wizards cluster and cluck and argue and fret, and as a terrified page arrives with a dish full of cocktail weenies, you detach yourself from the wall and wander over to look up at the tall figure still standing inside the circle. “Uh,” you say. “What....is that a _scythe_?”

Absently you reach out and tweak the tray from the nerveless grasp of the kid, who turns and flees, and hold it out through the force-line of the circle, which tingles like ice-cold water where your hand passes through. 

Bony fingertips close round a toothpick. THANK YOU, MISTER VANTAS, he says. Your scowl darkens until you think it probably has the power to knock people over at close range, but the expressionless skull-face obviously doesn’t change. YES, IT IS A SCYTHE. FOR THE REAPING, YOU SEE. ONE OF MY MANY EPITHETS IS THE GRIM REAPER.

“Not sickles, huh.” These aren’t half bad, these cocktail weenies. “Why a scythe?”  


IT LOOKS BETTER IN THE WOODCUTS.

“Fair enough,” you admit. “We didn’t have those, or at least they weren’t still a thing on my planet. Sicklekind is still around, of course, that’s like a combination of symbolism and Threshecutioner weaponry and shit, but scythes haven’t been a thing since...ever? It’s impressive, I gotta say.”

WHAT CRITERIA ARE USED FOR JUDGING A THING TO BE A THING? YOU USE A CURIOUS SYSTEM OF METASYNTACTIC VARIABLES IN YOUR CONVERSATION, MISTER VANTAS. NEVERTHELESS, I AM CURIOUS ABOUT THESE THRESHECUTIONERS OF YOURS. HOW IS IT THAT THE REAPER EXECUTES THE HARVEST HIMSELF?

“Who said anything about reaping, that’s Cavalreapers, they suck. No, look, Threshecutioners are an elite fucking force under Her Imperial Condescension’s command...”

You haven’t had a chance to wax eloquent about your quondam career path in a _long_ time now, and for all his offputting traits this guy is one fuck of a good listener. You find yourself going on and on and on, hand gestures and all, occasionally having to back up and explain a particularly complex turn of invective, but it isn’t until Sollux taps you on the shoulder that you realize the wizards are kind of standing around and staring at you two as if they’re not really sure what to do next. Oh. You should....probably let Death get back to his party or whatever, huh.

“Can I just ask you one last thing? How the fuck do you actually talk in capslock?”

There is no fucking way one of those iceblue pinpoints of light flickers on and off for a second, like a skeletal eyeless wink. That is not a thing that just happened. 

THAT WOULD BE TELLING, MISTER VANTAS, says Death. 

You...are kind of glad you haven’t got any way to access the internet, right now. You have _no idea_ what kind of crazy shit you might spill onto a memo after a conversation like this one. 

You let Sollux lead you away and you don’t look back, but for some reason a little spark of something unfamiliar that you think might be self-approbation flickers in the twisted black wreck that is your psyche. This planet isn’t _so_ bad, after all.


End file.
